Reboot Windows computer from command line (CMD)

by admin on April 21, 2009

We can reboot a Windows computer from command line using the in-built shutdown command. Below you can find syntax of this command for various use cases. The below commands work on Windows 7, Windows 8 and all other server editions.

Command to reboot windows computer:

shutdown /r

The above command will set a time out of 30 seconds to close the applications. After 30 seconds, windows reboot will start.

If you want to reboot Windows with your own time out value you can use the below command.

shutdown /r /t timeout_in_seconds

To shutdown a Windows computer:

shutdown /s

To abort computer reboot:
If you have issued a reboot command and have changed mind, you can stop Windows reboot by running the below command.

I’ve just attempted all commands from Windows 7 Ultimate install disk (used as recovery disk) and I obviously have a fault with my disk trying to load the Windows installation volume, I’ve launched command prompt via shift F10 as the GUI was not responding or should I say it had a never ending hour glass, trying a force shut down resulted in ‘the function is unknown’ proceeded with some numerical digits inside of closed brackets?